Javascript- An Essay of Ice And Fire
01 Sep 2017
So in case you’re not as big of a Game of Thrones fan as I am, the Song of Ice and Fire is a fantasy book series, that has been adapted into a very popular TV series. Without giving too much away, the story slowly but gorgeously leads up to the joining of two polarizing forces, hence Ice and Fire. I bring this story up, because when I start to think of the funky family trees that have brought us today’s most popular programming languages, it seems like Java Script could be emerging as the Prince that was Promised. Ok that was the last Game of Thrones joke I swear! But despite the masses of developers that love to hate on JavaScript and would wish it dead, it showed us the light of the internet! It really harnessed the potential for a website experience.
I’m a newbie to JavaScript. So far in my two years of coding, I have primarily worked in C and C++. After going through the JavaScript module from freeCodeCamp, I felt like there are many similarities. Maybe I have not dug deep enough to find the real limitations, but I really enjoyed the fact that you can return a function! Mind Blown! I also appreciated the malleability of the data types compared to the unforgiving background that I am used to. The multi-typed arrays were a really cool feature in my eyes. This may be a naive statement, but I saw novelness in the triple equals feature as well. It’s not that C doesn’t provide a comparable operation, but for a reader, it is much more obvious how specific the author wants the argument to be.
I have begun my JavaScript journey through a concept known as athletic software engineering. In order for an athlete to succeed, they must practice consistently. My software engineering professor, Phillip Johnson, has applied this pedagogy toward learning software and so far, I am sold! It makes so much sense that it hurts. Not only do we learn new skills on a consistent schedule, we also train our endurance and speed as well. Every week we go through a series of timed challeges known as a “WOD” or “Work out of the Day”. These are always surprises, similar to a pop quiz, in order to prepare us for the big test: Life as a programmer. So far I am really enjoying it and believe that the consistent practice is already paying off. Looks like practice paid off for this guy:
